Bruno Leone

Bruno Leone is credited with single handedly rescuing the Neapolitan street tradition of Pulcinella puppetry from extinction in the 1970s by carefully building a relationship with its last surviving practitioner Nunzio Zampella.

Since then Bruno - and his subsequent artistic collaborators, colleagues and students - have ensured a glorious revival of the tradition and made Pulcinella an honoured guest at festivals around the world.

Bruno is not only a supreme amabassador, maestro and teacher of his tradition, but has made it his artistic mission to bring Pulicinella into contact with the major themes of great art: war, betrayal, power and love. In addition to his incomparable traditional street show his productions have included: Pulcinella and the French Revolution; The Tale of the Poet and Pulcinella; Pulcinella and St. Gennaro; and Pulcinella in Palestine.

← José Gil, Bruno Leone and Clive Chandler in Portugal

Without the Pulcinella of the Commedia dell’ arte there would be no Mr. Punch, and the agile anarchy of the puppet considered Punch’s ‘godfather’ is clearly echoed in the slapstick knockabout of his English relative.

Bruno’s Pulcinella brought official greetings from the City of Naples to Mr. Punch’s 350th ‘birthday’ in 2012, where he performed in Covent Garden piazza on the spot where Samuel Pepys had first witnessed “an Italian puppet play” in 1662.